


The Tiny Child

by MeansToOffend (goodmorning)



Series: 31 in 31: NHL Fairy Tales [14]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Calgary Flames, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-31 19:52:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12139872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorning/pseuds/MeansToOffend
Summary: "It was an unusually beautiful day in New Jersey, late in the summer. The grass was green. The sky was blue. The birds were singing in the trees.It was on this unusually beautiful day that Johnny was born."





	The Tiny Child

It was an unusually beautiful day in New Jersey, late in the summer. The grass was green. The sky was blue. The birds were singing in the trees.

It was on this unusually beautiful day that Johnny was born.

“Well, he’s a little small,” his father said.

“He’s perfect,” said Johnny’s mother, and meant it.

As Johnny grew, it became clear that his father had perhaps been right after all; but they lived in hope that his mother had been right, too, and things were fine for a while.

Then Johnny came home from kindergarten with a skinned knee and a story of bullying. 

“We’ll have to get him into a sport,” Johnny’s father said, and Johnny picked hockey.

So it was that Johnny joined a group of other young children at a skating class. 

“He’s very small,” one of the coaches said, looking at him.

“Well, a little bit,” the other agreed, “but he skates as well as the others, or maybe even better. I think we should keep him on.”

But the bullying got worse. Children are not always kind to those who are different, and Johnny was no exception. “He’s too small,” they said, and took care to ‘accidentally’ trip him whenever they could. But, as he was a good skater, this was not very often, and so Johnny persevered.

As he grew older and sticks and pucks were introduced to the class, it became clear that Johnny was something of a prodigy, and so he joined a travel team.

It went much as before until he reached the age when checking was introduced.

“Can you throw a big hit?” one coach asked.

“Probably not,” Johnny answered, wondering where the conversation was going.

“Can you muscle other guys off the puck?” another wanted to know.

“Well, that’s not exactly…” Johnny said, but the coaches were already talking over him.

“If you can’t do either of those things I don’t see how you think you’re going to make it in the NHL,” the head coach said to him at last.

But Johnny persevered still more. He ate as much food as he could. He stuffed pucks down his pants at the Combine for a little extra weight. It looked as though his size might make teams pass him up, but he remained hopeful. He watched as player after player were chosen before him, but he didn’t envy them, just hoped that the next name would be his.

At last, in the fourth round, he was chosen. And when he made his debut for the Flames, he was incredibly happy.

He thought about the way he had been bullied and overlooked, and the way everyone was now singing his praises, and listened to the crowd applauding. Johnny raised his stick in salute and thought, from the bottom of his heart, “I never dreamed that this could happen when I was a tiny child.”

**Author's Note:**

> \- He's tiny.  
> \- Based on "The Ugly Duckling."


End file.
